The
Jalisco Charros
broke up a tight Game Six with nine runs in the fifth inning and went
on to
clobber the Obregon Yaquis, 11-1, last Monday in Guadalajara to win
their first
Mexican Pacific League championship series, 4 games to 2.The Charros are now in Panama City, where
they'll start a hastily-rescheduled Caribbean Series on Monday night
against
the Venezuelan champion Lara Cardinales at 8PM Eastern.

Jalisco
and starting
pitcher Marco Tovar held a precarious 2-1 lead over Obregon heading
into the
bottom of the fifth, when the Horsemen sent twelve batters to the plate
to
knock out Yaquis starter Yoanner Negrin. Negrin hit finals MVP Dariel
Alvarez
to open the frame and allowed four consecutive hits before being
relieved by
Jesus Anguamea after Stephen Cardullo lined a two-run double to left
that
scored Japhet Amador and Henry Urrutia, giving Jalisco a 5-1 lead.Anguamea plunked the first batter he faced,
Gabriel Gutierrez, to reload the bases before striking out Alonzo
Harris for
the first out of the inning.Amadeo
Zazueta then singled to left to plate two more runs, making it a 7-1
Charros
lead. Manny Rodriguez then singled in Gutierrez and Alvarez cracked a
three-run
homer to left to stake Tovar and Jalisco their final 11-1 margin of
victory.After tossing a scoreless
sixth, Tovar was taken out after 78 pitches and it was left to Rafael
Martin,
Chad Gaudin and Sergio Romo to close out the contest.

Alvarez
went 4-for-4 for
the winners, scoring twice and driving in four runs to key Jalisco's
16-hit attack.The 30-year-old Cuban
outfielder had cups of
coffee with Baltimore in 2015 and 2016 before missing the last two
summers
after undergoing Tommy John surgery while the Orioles were trying to
convert
him to pitcher.Alvarez is still a free
agent but after hitting .370 and earning the LMP finals MVP on the
heels of a
regular season during which he hit .315 with 14 homers for the Charros
(leading
the MexPac with a .571 slugging percentage), he likely caught some MLB
organization's attention.

Despite
his Game Six
difficulties, Anguamea was picked up from Obregon as a reinforcement
player for
the Charros, who also added second baseman Ramon Rios from Mazatlan
after
regular season MVP Rodriguez sustained what's being called a "muscular
injury." Anguamea and Rios were joined as add-ons by catcher Sebastian
Valle (Mazatlan), infielders Victor Mendoza (Navojoa), Jasson Atondo
(Hermosillo) and Rodolfo Amador (Los Mochis), outfielder/DH Jesus
Valdez
(Obregon) and pitchers Edgar Torres and Francisco Moreno (both from
Mazatlan)
and Mexicali's Jake Sanchez and Efren Delgado.

The
Caribbean Series
will feature six teams for the first time, with Panamanian champion
Herrera a
late addition after the event was moved to the Central American nation
last
week after unrest in Venezuela scuttled plans to hold it in
Barquisimeto for
the second year in a row.The late
start, coupled with Major League Baseball's spring training set to open
next
week, compresses the tournament into two three-team divisions playing
double
round-robins between Monday through Saturday, with the top teams in
each
division meeting next Sunday for the CS title.

Jalisco
will represent
Mexico in Group A along with the Las Tunas Lenadores (Cuba) and Lara
Cardinales
(Venezuela) while Group B consists of the Santurce Cangrejeros (Puerto
Rico),
Orientales Estrellas (Dominican Republic) and the host Herrera Toros
(Panama).All games will take place at
Rod Carew National Stadium in Panama City. Newly-elected Hall of Famer
Mariano
Rivera, a native of Panama, will toss out the ceremonial first
pitch...we're
guessing it'll be a cutter.

The
Acayucan Tobis
overcame an opening day loss (a 1-0 shocker to Argentina's Cordoba
Falcones) to
reach the Latin American Series title game before dropping a 3-1
contest in
eleven innings to Nicaragua's Leon Leones Saturday in front of a full
house at
Beto Avila Park in Veracruz.

The Tobis
scored the
first run of the game in the bottom of the first inning when Eliseo
Aldazaba
drew a bases-loaded walk on four pitches, pushing Kevin Flores across
the
plate.Leon tied the contest up in the
top of the second when Keurys de la Cruz doubled and later scored on a
single
by Edgard Montiel to make it 1-1.The
score stood until the top of the eleventh, when de la Cruz came up with
another
double, this time down the left-field line with the sacks full to bring
in
Darian Gonzalez and Adrian Moreno with the go-ahead runs.Acayucan was unable to score in the bottom of
the frame as Nicaragua's champions won the Serie
Latinoamericana for the fourth time in the seven-year history of
the
tournament.Leon cruised through the
first round with a perfect 5-0 record and won their Friday semifinal
game over
Panama's Herrera Toros, 5-4, on Maikel Caseras' walkoff RBI single in
the
bottom of the ninth.

Following
their
first-day loss on January 26, Acayucan won two of their remaining four
first-round contests (beating Colombia's Barranquilla Caimanes, 6-1,
last
Sunday and blanking Herrera, 4-0, on Tuesday) to reach the LAS Final
Four,
where they faced countrymen Xalapa.The
Chileros lost to the Tobis in seven games in the Veracruz Winter League
title
series, but were able to edge Acayucan in extra innings last Monday in
the
first round by a 4-3 count as Yancarlo Angulo led off the tenth by
drawing a
walk off Tobis veteran Adrian C. Ramirez and later scored the go-ahead
counter
on an Oscar Soto single.Kevin Flores
led off the bottom of the tenth with a single for Acayucan and advanced
to
second on a sacrifice fly by Eliseo Aldazaba but the next two Tobis
batters
were retired as Juan Pablo Tellez saved the win for fellow reliever
Heriberto
Sanchez.

Friday's
semifinal
rematch between the two LIV teams was no less riveting. The game was
scoreless
until the bottom of the fifth entrada, when Acayucan scored without a
hit when
leadoff batter Yadier Mujica got on board via a Xalapa error, moved to
second
when Eduardo Arredondo as hit by a pitch, took third on a Yadir Drake
sacrifice
bunt and came in with the first run of the game on Angel Francisco
Rivera's
ground out.Aldazaba cracked a leadoff
homer in the bottom of the sixth and Mujica led off the seventh with a
double
and later scored from third with the final run of the night to give
Acayucan a
3-0 lead they never relinquished as Edgar Gonzalez and four reliever
combined
on a five-hit shutout.

Although
Nicaragua's
Leones ran the table for the LAS and were clearly the best team in the
tournament, Panama's Herrera was tabbed to fill a sixth berth in the
Caribbean
Series by virtue of being champion of the host country's national
winter
league.The competition is expected to
get a little tougher.

AMLO PROMISES
VERACRUZ ANOTHER LIGA
TEAM...THIS YEAR

Whatever
one thinks of
new Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador probably depends on
their political
leanings, but his supporters and detractors alike have to agree on one
thing:
When it comes to baseball, the man has been very proactive.Just days after fulfilling a campaign promise
by brokering a Mexican Pacific League expansion franchise for Guasave
(along
with a tenth LMP team in Monterrey), the so-called AMLO said during a
morning
press conference last Thursday that Veracruz would see a return of
their
Mexican League team for a 2019 season that will be opening in two
months.

De Pelota en Pelotas website
writer Hector
"Chapis" Sanchez quoted Lopez Obrador, who was in Veracruz last week
during the recently-concluded Latin American Series, as saying that the
LMB
would be expanding from 16 to 18 teams for the coming season and that
one of
them would be the Veracruz Rojos del Aguila.The most recent edition of Mexico's oldest professional baseball
team
(the original Veracruz Reds were formed in 1903) moved to the Texas
border
after the 2017 season as the Dos Laredos Tecolotes, who played in both
Nuevo
Laredo, Tamaulipas and Laredo, Texas last year.

The Tecos
will move
their home games south of the border to Parque La Junta, a 72-year-old
facility
that seats 6,000 and has been host to five previous Liga championship
teams.
The Tecos played their Mexican home games at Estadio Nuevo Laredo last
year but
the 12,000-seater (which is 60 years newer than Parque La Junta) is
located out
of town, which has been a bone of contention among local baseball fans
concerned for their safety traveling to the ballpark in a region that's
been
the scene of some of Mexico's toughest drug war battles among cartels
and
federal police agencies.

Although
Veracruz has
been one of the most prominent states in Mexican baseball for decades
and the
home of 1940's majordomo Jorge Pasquel, it is reminiscent of Florida
among
states in the USA as a place where you'll find plenty of players on the
field
but not so many fans in the stands.Whether AMLO is able to push the LMB to expand to 18 teams in
fewer than
ten weeks or not, LMB president Javier Salinas has to be wondering what
his role
is within the league that hired him to replace Plinio Escalante after
the
latter retired following the 2017 season.

Salinas
had originally
convinced owners to contract from 16 to 12 teams for the upcoming
season, with
Aguascalientes, Laguna, Leon and Puebla going on hiatus for at least
one
year.Instead, Lopez Obrador managed to
bring those four franchises back from the freezer even though the
Aguascalientes franchise is out of money for all intent and purposes
while
Laguna owners Erick and Jose Juan Arellano have repeatedly expressed
their
desire to divest themselves of the Algodoneros(a move likely supported by fans in Torreon and Gomez Palacio)
so they
could devote all their attention and resources on the Yucatan Leones
team they
also own.

At this
point, all
anybody can do is keep an eye on things and wait for the dust to settle.Just don't ask when.